Here comes 1.info.
The ICANN Board approved a resolution granting Afilias the right to register one and two character .info domain names during its Board meeting last Thursday.
.Info registry Afilias made the request in February. It plans to model the distribution of the short domain names similar to how Neustar handled the release of one and two character .biz domain names:
1. Requests for Proposal, where anyone can submit a proposal for developing a particular name. Afilias will award domains to RFPs that meet its goal of broadening awareness of .info.
2. Auction of any domain not given during the RFP
3. Open registration
Neustar’s release of the short domain names resulted in some good sales, particularly ones that could take advantage of the .biz extension. e.Biz sold for $66,001. Most one character .biz domains sold for about $5,000 to $15,000, whereas the typical two character domain sold for under $1,000.
The biggest lift in Neustar’s case was inking a deal with Overstock to launch O.biz through its RFP process. It will be interesting to see if Afilias is able to get any big name companies to sign on.
Steve M says
If I may, Andrew …
… what do you and everyone think … will the 1 & 2 character .infos go for more or less than the .bizs did?
Why do you think so?
Andrew Allemann says
@ Steve M – good question. Part of me thinks they could go for less b/c:
-Investors have already invested in one and two character .biz
-They just spent a lot of .tv, including short .tv’s
Depends on if these same investors still have $$ to put into short, non-.com domains. Also depends on if some of them thought they’d be able to flip them by now w/o much success.
Bottom line is that within 2-3 years we’ll be able to register a number of short domain names as new TLDs are released.